EVANSVILLE—The historic Camp Adanac, owned by Dick Tappenden of Cleveland, Ohio, is the latest property to have been purchased on Manitoulin Island by the Blue Goose Capital Corp.
“The deal is closing tomorrow,” Kevin Reed, president and CEO of Blue Goose, told the Recorder late Monday afternoon. “The purchase is for all of Camp Adanac, which is approximately 800 acres in total and has many cottages located on it, as well as a main camp kitchen-dining room building. Mike Meeker and Mr. Tappenden are good friends, and our immediate plans are to start some fish operations there with fish cages and use as part of our fishery extension and produce rainbow trout, subject to the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) approvals.”
“I’m really excited about all of this,” Mr. Meeker told the Recorder. “The nice thing about this purchase is that it will provide a combination of three things that will help our (aquaculture) industry move forward. One, it will provide more fish production; currently there are still millions of pounds of rainbow trout being imported for the Ontario market, along with other countries. Second, it will help us with integrating our operations so we will be more efficient. Step two of the process will be having a hatchery at the Camp Adanac site to support the need to raise fish locally in cages and allows us stock the size of fish we want, and to use these fish to boost the markets for this fish in Ontario with locally grown and raised fish.”
“Thirdly, one of the things the NOAA (Northern Ontario Aquaculture Association) has focussed on in the past 10 years has been on research, and at this point we are still the world leader in fresh water aquaculture research,” said Mr. Meeker, who is president of the NOAA. “With Camp Adanac, and all the infrastructure it has in place—cabins, kitchen-dining room, and the water system—it will be a centre point for scientists to come and do their work and research here. They will have the opportunity to do fresh water ecosystem research. I know that Kevin (Reed) has already had interest from the United Nations, interested in having scientists do fresh water fish research here.”
“Right now Mike (Meeker) is sizing up what he thinks we can do in terms of fish production,” said Mr. Reed. “Frankly, what we would like to do is turn Manitoulin Island into a freshwater research place for aquaculture to allow scientists from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to come and stay here and do their studies and research here.”
Mr. Reed pointed out Camp Adanac hasn’t been in use since 2006. “We need to look at how we can bring everything we are planning online, and we will be doing this work this summer, so that by 2014 we will have nets in place and fish production will be taking place.”
“We have arranged for Mr. Tappenden and his son Rick Jr. to be able to continue to stay and use the camp facilities for the next five years,” continued Mr. Reed. “Dick has a lot of good memories there having run his kids camps over the years at the camp.”
“We are really pleased with this purchase, due to fabulous people, and the tremendous properties we have been able to acquire to keep our focus on high end agriculture and now aquaculture as well,” added Mr. Reed.
Tom Sasvari
